الرمز المفقود هي رواية تم تطويرها تحت عنوان مفتاح سليمان , للمحرر والروائي الأمريكي دان براون. It is a thriller set in Washington, D.C.

Released on September 15, 2009, it is the third Brown novel to involve the character of Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon, following 2000's Angels & Demons and 2003's The Da Vinci Code. It had a first printing of 6.5 million (5 million in North America, 1.5 million in the UK), the largest in Doubleday history. On its first day the book sold one million in hardcover and e-book versions in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, making it the fastest selling adult novel in history. By September 25 the book topped the Best Seller list for hardcover fiction.

المؤامرة

The story takes place over a period of 12 hours in Washington, D.C., with a focus on Freemasonry. Robert Langdon is summoned to give a lecture in National Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol, with the invitation apparently from his mentor, a 33rd degree Mason named Peter Solomon, who is the head of the Smithsonian Institution. Solomon has also asked him to bring a small package which he had stored with Langdon for safekeeping years earlier. When Langdon arrives at the Capitol, however, instead of an audience for his lecture, and after receiving a phone call from the person that he thought was from Solomon's office he hears screams coming from the Capitol Rotunda. Running, he finds the severed right hand of Peter Solomon directly in the middle of the room. The hand contains tattoes on each finger, and Langdon recognizes it as the symbolic 'Hand of the Mysteries', which seemingly points straight up to the fresco The Apotheosis of Washington on the inside of the Capitol dome. Langdon realizes that it is the hand of his kidnapped friend, and from messages already received he knows that the kidnapper wants him to find both the Mason's Pyramid, which Mason's believe is hidden somewhere underground in Washington D.C. and the Mason's "word" which will complete the task that the kidnapper has given himself.

Soon the head of the Capitol police arrives, followed by the head of the CIA's Office of Security, Inoue Sato. As Langdon begins to analyze the tattoos on the hand, he tells Sato that if the fingers of the hand are moved, more tatooing will be found. She opens the fingers, and finds another clue, which eventually they all figure out points them down instead of up. They jouney to a neglected and almost unknown portion of the capitol's sub-basement, and in a small room find Peter Solomon's Masonic Altar which many Masons construct in their home to remind them of the fleeting nature of life. A skull and other symbolistic items adorn the altar, but when a candle is lit the group notices that one wall seems to be moving in the slight breeze. When what turns out to be a curtain is moved aside, a small pyramid with no capstone is found, with words carved into it, which obviously will take Langdon to the next stop on his search to find the "word" in time to save his kidnapped friend.

During this period Sato, who had asked the Capitol police to look closely at a security x-ray taken of Langdon's bag when he entered the building, finds out that the x-ray shows that the package Langdon is carrying contains another small pyramid. She asks Langdon about it, and he, being unaware of what the package he was bringing to Peter Solomon contained, says he doesn't know what she means. She has him restrained, and is prepared to take him and the two pyramids to CIA headquarters for questioning. At this point Warren Bellamy, the Architect of the Capitol and a Freemason, arrives in the sub-basement room, instantly grasps the situation, and knocks down the police chief and the CIA security chief, frees Langdon, and urges him to follow him back to the upper levels of the Capitol.

The kidnapper turns out to be Mal'akh, a brilliant, tattooed villain who's main motivation is the obtaining of an ancient source of power , and who continues to demand that Langdon unlock the Ancient Mysteries in return for Peter's life. In a fiery nighttime explosion, Mal'akh also destroys the Smithonsonian-sponsored laboratory of Dr. Katherine Solomon, Peter's younger sister, where she conducted successful experiments in the ability of the human mind to affect subatomic particles. In addition, the CIA is pursuing Mal'akh in the interests of National Security. Mal'akh puts Langdon in a tank of breatable oxygenated water from where Langdon unlocks the code at the Pyramid's base. Then mal'akh after learning the answer from Langdon Takes Peter Solomon with him leaving Langdon who is seen to die in the tank and Katherine, who is bound and left to bleed to death.

When the CIA arrive, they release Langdon and Katherin who tell them where Mal'akh is headed. With Langdon's directions the set out to stop Mal'akh

In te Mason's secret Chamber in the Capitol, using a heavily edited videotape concerning the Mason's secret rituals, Mal'alh who turns out to be Zachary Solomon forces the Word out of Peter Solomon and tattoos it on his head.

Then Zachary Solomon forces Peter to sacrifice him as he beleives that it is his great destiny to lead the forces of evil. Peter refuses to doso just as the helicopter in which Director Sato is in smashes the overhead glass panel, many of it's peices strikig Zachary just as Langdin rushes in. Peter Solomon then tells Zachary that the Word he has tattood on his head is not the word. Zachary Solomon dies and the CIA stop the video from being transmitted to several leading Media Channels.

With Zachary Solomon dead, and after his father, Peter, regains his composure, Peter Solomon then tells Langdon that the 'word' is indeed real, and that he will take him to it. After blindfolding Langdon so he can't see where they are going, likely in an attempt to give him a type of Freemason initiation, they finally arrive at their destination which Sato had arranged to have opened for them. Going through barriers which shut behind them, and then led a few feet within a chamber, Solomon asks Langdon to remove the blindfold and look down. He does, and as his eyes adjust to the darkness and a flashlight is provided, Langdon sees a deep stairway going well into the darkness below. He is then led to a window, eyes closed, and told that what he will see will transform him. He opens his eyes, sees the Capitol below and away from him, and instantly knows that he is in the room atop the Washington Monument.

Looking at the city from the four windows situated there, Langdon is told that the 'word' does lie beneath hundreds of stairs beneath the massive stone, the pyramid stone atop the Monument, buried in the cornerstone of the building. Langdon realizes that the symbols which pointed there were used to actually spell out the words 'Laus Deo' which translate to "Praise God". These words, Langdon knows, are imprinted in very tiny letters on the actual and very small aluminum capstone which lies on top of the pyramid above. As they descend the staircase, Solomon tells Langdon that the 'word' underground is a copy of the Bible, but explains that the 'secrets hidden in plain sight' in the Bible all point to the belief that man is a part of God, and that out of many minds comes one, an at-one-ment. That this 'word', this hidden in plain view belief, is contained in all the major books of religion, and that while the masses look to one set of data in each of the holy books that enlightened men and women can see the encoded-in-plain-sight information in them all.

الشخصيات

• Robert Langdon, Harvard symbologist
• Mal'akh (Anthony Jelbart, Dr. Christopher Abaddon, Inmate 37, Andros Dareios, Zachary Solomon), tattooed and brilliant villain
• Peter Solomon, Smithsonian secretary, billionaire, and Freemason
• Katherine Solomon, Noetic scientist, sister of Peter Solomon
• Isabel Solomon, mother of Peter and Katherine Solomon, grandmother of Zachary Solomon, murdered on Christmas Eveعشرة years before the book began. first female victim of Mal'akh.
• Trish Dunne, Katherine Solomon's assistant, and seoond female victim of Mal'akh
• Mark Zoubianis, hacker and friend of Trish
• Warren Bellamy, Architect of the capitol, and Freemason
• Inoue Sato, diminutive woman who is Director of CIA's Office of Security
• Nola Kaye, CIA analyst
• Rick Parrish, CIA security specialist
• Turner Simkins, CIA field operations leader
• Reverend Colin Galloway, dean of the Washington Cathedral, and Freemason
• Trent Anderson, Capitol police chief
• Alfonso Nuñez, Capitol security guard
• Jonas Faukman, New York editor
• Omar Amirana, DC cab driver
• Officer Paige Montgomery, an officer from Preferred Security who finds Peter Solomon at Mal'akh's house and is then killed by Mal'akh.

التطوير

The book had been in development for several years; originally expected in 2006, the projected publication date was pushed back multiple times. The book was published on September 15, 2009 with an initial print run of 6.5 million copies, the largest first printing in publisher Random House's history. Electronic versions such as eBook and Audible book versions were also made available on the same date.

Release

المبيعات

The Lost Symbol broke sales records, becoming the fastest selling adult-market novel in history, with over one million copies sold on the first day of release. By the end of the first week, a total of two million copies had been sold in the U.S., Canada, and UK. The hardcopy book was on pre-order lists for months leading up to its release, being heavily ordered both in the United States and Canada. According to the publisher, on its first day the book sold 1 million in hardcover and e-book versions in the U.S., the UK and Canada, prompting the printing of an additional 600,000 hardcover copies to theخمسة million initially printed.

On its first day the book became the #1 bestseller in amazon.com, and the Amazon Kindle e-reader edition became the top-selling item on Amazon.com, outselling Amazon's sales of the hardback copy of the novel, which is the sixth best selling book of 2009 on pre-publication orders alone.The Lost Symbol also ranked as the #1 bestseller in Amazon's Canadian and British sites. Both Barnes & Noble and Waterstone's reported the book has broken all previous records for adult fiction in the United Kingdom. According to Nielsen BookScan data, 550,946 copies of The Lost Symbol were sold in its first week of sale, taking £4.6 million. By the end of the second sales week, Transworld intends to have 1.25 million copies printed. By September 25 the book ranked #1 in the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction.

إستقبال الرواية

The New York Times praised the book as being "impossible to put down" and claimed Brown is "bringing sexy back to a genre that had been left for dead". Nevertheless, it noted the overuse of certain phrases and italics, as well as the lack of logic behind characters' motivations. It also likened one of the characters to Jar Jar Binks.Los Angeles Times said, "Brown's narrative moves rapidly, except for those clunky moments when people sound like encyclopedias."Newsweek called the book "contrived", saying that to get through The Lost Symbol, just like The Da Vinci Code, it was necessary to swallow a lot of coincidences, but the book was still a page-turner, and that Brown "is a maze maker who builds a puzzle and then walks you through it. His genius lies in uncovering odd facts and suppressed history, stirring them together into a complicated stew and then saying, what if?" The National Post's review called it a "heavy-handed, clumsy thriller" and that the character of the villain (Mal'akh) "bears an uncomfortably close similarity" to the Francis Dolarhyde character in Thomas Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon. The Daily Telegraph said the novel was "not quite the literary train-wreck expected."TIME said the plot was fun, if bruising, but "It would be irresponsible not to point out that the general feel, if not all the specifics, of Brown's cultural history is entirely correct. He loves showing us places where our carefully tended cultural boundaries — between Christian and pagan, sacred and secular, ancient and modern — are actually extraordinarily messy." Novelist William Sutcliffe's review in the Financial Times panned the book as "a novel that asks nothing of the reader, and gives the reader nothing back", adding that it "is filled with cliché, bombast, undigested research and pseudo-intellectual codswallop". The digested read by John Crace in The Guardian ends with Robert Langdon begging Dan Brown "Please don't wheel me out again."

Adaptations

The book is expected to be made into a movie by Columbia Pictures, for release in 2012.

انظر ايضاً

• Circumpunct
• Kryptos
• Institute of Noetic Sciences

مراجع

للإستزادة

• Brown, Jeffrey, "Decoding the Hidden Secrets of Dan Brown's D.C.", The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, September 24, 2009. Transcript.

روابط خارجية

• Author Dan Brown's Official Website
• Official The Lost Symbol Website
• Official UK Website for Dan Brown
• [1]
• Official Spanish The Lost Symbol Website
• Official Australian The Lost Symbol Website
• The Lost Symbol's ISBN decoded
• Washington Post, November 1, 2005, "The man who's riding Dan Brown's 'code' tails"
• Brown, Dan (September 13, 2009). ". The Parade. Retrieved September 13, 2009.

نطقب:Robert Langdon's Novels